E 
179 

T56 



The Hand of God 
in American History 



A Study of Divine Providence as Seen 

in the Life and Mission of 

a Nation 



By WILBUR FISK TILLETT, D.D., LL.D. 

Professor of Christian Doctrine in tlie School of Religion, and Dean 

Emeritus of the Theological Faculty in 

Vanderbilt University 



The Hand of Qod in 
Americdn Ristori] 

bi3 IPilbur Fisk Tilletl, D.D., hh.D. 

Dean Emeritus of the Theological Facultij 
in Uanderbilt Uniuersilij 



11-)AS RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
LL/ justified in calling America "the last 
and noblest effort of Divine Providence in 
behalf of the human race"? 

In what way has the history of the 
United States exemplified the Divine Law? 

What deeds can America appeal to in 
proof of the truth of her claim that she 
had a providential origin, a providential 
history, and a providential mission in the 
world? 



Board, 35 cents; paper, 25 cent* 



A benevolent layman of Virginia, impressea with the 
great value of this study of American history, has pre- 
sented a copy of it to every member of the House ol 
Representatives and of the United States Senate. 



Na 




Class „&1T9 



lidoK 



ith 



PliKSKNTCI) BY 



3H3ttl| tl|e compHinents af 



The Hand of God 
in American History 



A Study of Divine Providence as Seen 

in the Life and Mission of 

a Nation 



By WILBUR FISK TILLETT, D.D., LL.D. 

Professor of Christian Doctrine in the School of Religion, and Dean 

Emeritus of the Theological Faculty in 

Vanderbilt University 



PUBLISHING HOUSE M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH 

LAMAR & BARTON, Agents 
Nashville, Tenn. Dallas, Tex. Richmond, Va. 



Reprint from "The Methodist Quarteriy Review" for October, 1922 
with some additions 






THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN 
HISTORY. 



A Study of Divine Providence as Seen in the Life and 
Mission of a Nation. 



"The last and noblest effort of Divine Providence in behalf 
of the human race" is what Ralph Waldo Emerson calls the 
United States of America. The word "America" has come to 
be used throughout the world as a designation of this one large 
and influential republic of the North American Continent; 
and if we so use it, it is simply in compliance with accepted 
usage and widespread custom, and not because we fail to 
recognize the importance and greatness of other countries and 
nations in North and South America. 

I. God's Use of Nations. 

If God does his work in this world through men, as indeed 
he ever does, he needs men collectively as well as individually 
for the accomplishment of his purposes. If human govern- 
ments and nations are, as indeed they are, a necessity in the 
world, they are a necessity to God as well as to men. Has 
anything short of Divine Omnipotence such power for good as 
a holy nation whose government Is founded upon the princi- 
ples of righteousness, and which Is conducted so as to pro- 
mote intelligence and righteousness among Its own people and 
throughout the earth? To answer these questions, as they 
must be answered, affirmatively, means that nations no less 
than individuals, even more than Individuals, are instru- 
ments of Divine Providence. Never before in the history of 
the world have the power and Influence of nations, alike for 
evil and for good, been so manifest as they are to-day: and 
never before has there been a time more fitting than the 
present, for the profitable study of the providential mission of 
a nation. If men will do, when collectively organized into 
(3) 



4 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

corporations and governments, what they will not do as in- 
dividuals, and this we know to be true, it is of the highest 
importance that along with national consciousness there 
should be developed a national conscience. In studying God's 
providential government of nations and his relations to civil 
governments, we must never lose sight of the fact that govern- 
ments and nations are not impersonal things and passive 
puppets in the Hand of Omnipotence, but free human beings 
collected in groups and organized in masses, and that God's 
providential government of them is subject to all the condi- 
tions and limitations involved in his government of individuals 
as free beings. 

Among the eminent philosophers of the world who have 
believed in Divine Providence, none was more pronounced and 
outspoken in expressing his convictions than Hegel. He re- 
garded "history as a spacious book of Providence recording 
how the deeds of men and nations have helped or hindered the 
purposes of God." He believed that the providence of God 
was exercised on a "large and grand scale," and protested 
against that "peddling view of Providence" which sees the 
Hand of God in the comparatively unimportant and trifling 
details of individual life, but not in the large and great affairs 
of nations and of the universe. His "Philosophy of History" 
is one long protest against the position, on the one hand, of 
those who limit the guiding Hand of God to the life and needs 
of individuals (for example, when help has unexpectedly come 
to an individual in great perplexity), and on the other hand, 
of those who believe in Divine Providence only in general, but 
not in the particulars and details that are involved in the proc- 
esses of life alike of individuals and of nations. When the 
lives of individuals and the histories of nations are thus 
viewed, they become not only a record of human annals, but 
a study of Divine Providence in things both small and great. 

We desire to point out some providential facts and circum- 
stances in the history of America, drawn, not to any consider- 
able extent from its religious and ecclesiastical history, but 
mainly from its civic life and what it is common to call secular 
history, finding perchance something sacred in the secular and 
much that is divine in what is most human. 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 5 

II. Christopher Columbus the Christ-Bearer. 

Among the many facts and circumstances that prove that 
this nation had its inspiration and origin in the hearts and 
consciences of those who beheved in Divine Providence and in 
Christ as the rightful Ruler of men and nations, we call atten- 
tion first to its discovery in 1492. 

Christopher Columbus regarded himself as engaged in a 
distinctly Christian mission, when, after committing himself 
and his company in prayer to the guidance of God, he went 
forth to discover whatever unknown worlds might lie between 
Spain and the East Indies. "Christopher," his baptismal 
name, means the "Christ-bearer," and he ever regarded him- 
self as being, by his very christening, "the called of God." 
He regarded his voyage of discovery as a kind of missionary 
journey. "God made me," he says, "a messenger of the new 
heavens and the new earth." And when this New World was 
discovered, he lost no time in claiming it for Christ. Erecting 
a cross on landing, he christened the new world ' ' San Salvador ' 
(St. Saviour), joined with his companions in singing the 
"Gloria in Excelsis," and began at once proclaiming Christ 
to the new and strange people whom he found here. 

Joaquin Miller, the American poet, although approaching 
and interpreting the mind and mission of Columbus from a 
different angle, makes him thereby no less an instrument of 
Divine Providence than do they who call attention to the 
religious faith and motives that characterized him. Miller's 
poem titled "Columbus" is in every way worthy of his theme, 
and of quotation in this study of the providential events and 
lessons in American history: 

Behind him lay the gray Azores, 

Behind the gates of Hercules; 
Before him not the ghost of shores, 

Before him only shoreless seas. 
The good mate said: " Now must we pray, 

For lo! the very stars are gone. 
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?" 

"Why, say: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'" 



6 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

"My men grow mutinous, day by day, 

My men grow ghastly wan and weak." 
The stout mate thought of home; a spray 

Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 
"What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, 

If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" 
"Why, you shall say at break of day, 

'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'" 

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow. 

Until at last the blanched mate said: 
"Why, now not even God would know 

Should I and all my men fall dead; 
These very winds forget their way, 

For God from these dread seas is gone. 
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say" — 

He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!" 

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: 

"This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. 
He curls his lip, he lies in wait. 

With lifted teeth, as if to bite! 
Brave Admiral, say but one good word: 

What shall we do when hope is gone?" 
The words leapt like a leaping sword: 

"Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!" 

Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, 

And peered through darkness. Ah, that night 
Of all dark nights! And then a speck — 

A light! a light! a light! a light! 
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! 

It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. 
He gained a world; he gave that world 

Its grandest lesson: "On! sail on!"* 

III. The Faith of Our Fathers. 

We think that facts can be adduced to prove that no great 
nation in the history of the world has ever been founded under 
conditions and influences so distinctly moral and religious, 
and by persons so thoroughly Christian in their ideals, mo- 
tives, and aims, as we may with confidence claim is true of 
America. Bishop Galloway has truly said, in his volume en- 
titled "Christianity and the Nation": 



*Copyrighted by Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Company. Printed by permission. 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 7 

The deepest and mightiest thing in any nation's heart is its religion; 
therefore as is the religion, so is the nation. I hesitate not to affirm that the 
temple at Jerusalem was built by a no more sacred patriotism or under the 
benedictions of a no more favoring Providence than were the colonial 
governments of this new world. Christian teachings were the seed thoughts 
of our political constitutions. 

The years that Intervened between the departure of 
Columbus from these shores and the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence in 1776 were years of providential preparation in which 
were laid, in the peoples that came hither, and in the ideals 
and motives that actuated them, the foundations of a nation 
that may be justified in claiming to be an "elect nation of 
God" if it shall prove itself such, not by self -righteousness, 
but by service to God and man. 

The people who settled in this country in the first instance 
were the picked Christian men and women of the civilized 
world. They constituted the sturdy stuff out of which the 
noblest type of Christian citizenship and the most heroic type 
of Christian manhood and womanhood are made. Many mo- 
tives prompted the coming of the colonists to this country, but 
it can easily be shown that the greatest of them all was reli- 
gion, the desire for religious and civil freedom to make pos- 
sible the highest development of moral character and per- 
sonality in themselves and their children. 

In the first settlement made by the English in North Amer- 
ica in 1606 (that in Virginia) the charter of the new colony 
gave special emphasis to the large place which the Christian 
religion was to have in the life of the new colony. The charter 
declared of the colony at Jamestown that it was designed that 
"under the providence of God it might tend to the glory of 
his Divine Majesty in propagating the Christian religion to 
such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance 
of the true knowledge and worship of God." The first build- 
ing erected by the young colony in Virginia was a house for 
Christian worship. The "Mayflower Compact" of 1620 de- 
clared that, foremost among the objects that brought the 
"Pilgrim Fathers" to this country was " the glory of God and 
the advancement of Christian faith." The "Articles of Con- 
federation of the New England Colonies," 1643, begin with 



8 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

these words: "Whereas we all came into these parts of Amer- 
ica with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance 
the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liber- 
ties of the gospel in purity and peace ; and whereas in our set- 
tling, by a wise providence of God, we are further dispersed 
upon the seacoasts and rivers than we at first intended, etc." 
— words which show their recognition of and dependence upon 
the guiding Hand of God. 

The Huguenots who came to this country were the very 
flower of the Christian manhood and womanhood of France. 
Driven by persecution from their native land, they found a 
welcome home in the Carolinas and elsewhere in America. A 
country never welcomed a finer type of Christian character 
and heroism to its shores than that of the French Huguenot. 
In the face of both royal and ecclesiastical despotism, they 
dared to contend for freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, 
and freedom of speech, the three essential principles of all reli- 
gious and civic liberty; and not being allowed to hold such 
sentiments in France, they turned to the one and only land 
that gave such sentiments and those who held them a hospi- 
table welcome. Henry Cabot Lodge says that in proportion 
to their numbers the Huguenots have produced and given to 
the American republic more men of character and ability than 
any other class of early settlers in this country. 

"The State of Georgia was colonized expressly as an asylum 
for imprisoned and persecuted Protestants." So writes Dr. 
Baird, the Church historian. "No colony of all the thirteen 
had a more distinctly Christian origin than this. Godly 
Moravians from Germany, devout Churchmen and pious 
Puritans from England, brave Highlanders from Scotland, 
the heroic Salzburgers from the Alps — all found a cordial 
welcome here." The history of these Salzburger colonists 
Bishop Hurst refers to as "one of the most remarkable records 
of a patient, pure, and uncomplaining religious body in the 
whole history of the Christian Church." 

The Scotch- Irish who settled in the upper valleys of Vir- 
ginia and in the Piedmont sections of Virginia and North 
Carolina were the very embodiment of sturdy and con- 
scientious Christian manhood. In the fiber of their moral 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 9 

character they were made of granite, of flint, of iron. They 
stand to-day, and have always stood, for all that is best in our 
Christian civilization. 

The Dutch who settled in New York were not so distinctly 
and avowedly religious as the other early settlers in the mo- 
tives that led them to come to this country; but their domi- 
nant motives were moral and civic, and not commercial, and 
they had back of them a history full of moral heroism, as 
shown in the long struggle for civil and religious liberty that 
made them just such a type of sturdy, solid Christian man- 
hood as was needed in the New World to lay the foundation 
for what has since become the metropolis of the nation. These 
Dutch settlers take pride in claiming to have built "the first 
free church and the first free school in America." 

Even the Roman Catholic colony, which was established by 
Lord Baltimore in what became the State of Maryland, be- 
came the most liberal and progressive type of Roman Catholi- 
cism which the world has ever seen. Their charter, obtained 
from the Protestant King of England, guaranteed perfect 
religious liberty, an almost unheard-of thing for Roman 
Catholicism to do In that day. 

The contrast in character between these early settlers, be- 
tween these heroic and high-minded men and women who 
came to these shores and created our republic, and the hu- 
man riffraff that is now drifting into this "melting pot" of 
the Western world is painful to contemplate, and calls for 
the most serious consideration and the wisest possible legis- 
lation, lest we as a nation in discharging our duty to others 
find that instead of our lifting these immigrant hordes up, we 
allow them to pull the nation down with their low. Godless, 
un-American ideals and social vices. 

However desirable Christian unity may be and however 
objectionable and hurtful a needless multiplication of reli- 
gious denominations may be, we count it a fortunate thing 
that there were many different and independent types of 
Christian experience, character, and faith that met together 
here in those early days. This tended to make the resultant 
type of Christian civilization and government that was devel- 
oped in this country singularly free from bigotry and sectarian 



10 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

narrowness, and more genuinely liberal than could have been 
the case had all been of one type of religious faith. The fact 
that there are and have always been in this country many 
different religious denominations is not a thing to be deplored 
as wholly evil. The different Churches have influenced each 
other for good, and have tended to make each other broad and 
chartiable, and have thus helped to create and maintain that 
ideal of civil and religious liberty which is the crown and glory 
of our republic. The growth of Christianity in this country 
and the contribution of American Christianity to world evan- 
gelization—neither of which has ever before been equaled 
in any country in any period of history — are in no small degree 
a resultant of the facts and conditions here referred to and 
are, as much as anything can be, a proof of the Hand of God 
in our history. But of this phase of our providential history 
we are not here writing in detail. 

The Declaration of Independence, 1776, recognized in un- 
mistakable terms the Divine Being and the need of the new- 
born nation for his blessing as they claimed for themselves 
the inalienable rights which they were entitled to "under the 
laws of Nature and Nature's God," such rights as all men had 
been "endowed with by their Creator." It was "with a firm 
reliance on the protection of Divine Providence" that they 
"pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their 
sacred honor." In the "Articles of Confederation," drawn 
up a year later, reference is made to how "it hath pleased the 
Great Governor of the world to incline the hearts of the Legis- 
latures to the articles of confederation and perpetual union." 
At a time like this there was but one step between what might 
turn out to be the highest patriotism, in one event, and the 
crime of treason, if it ended otherwise. "There is but one step 
between me and death," said a young man once who became 
later Israel's greatest king. One of these revolutionary pa- 
triots facetiously said: "Unless we all hang together, we are 
sure to hang separately." But the sequel proved that God's 
hand was at the helm, and that some political revolutions 
are providential. 

The Colonial Congress, which was the highest governing 
body in this country from the Declaration of Independence in 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 11 

1776 to the inauguration of George Washington as President 
in 1789, recognized repeatedly, in public utterances addressed 
to the people, "the government of Almighty God," "the 
merits and mediation of Jesus Christ," and the value of the 
Christian religion as the best means "for the promotion and 
enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth in righteous- 
ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." This Congress (in 
1782) passed a resolution that recognized the sanctity of the 
Holy Scriptures and their great value to the nation. 

At the historic Federal Convention which met in 1787 to 
make a Constitution for the new government of the United 
States, George Washington being in the chair, the venerable 
Benjamin Franklin made a motion that the exercises of the 
Convention be opened daily with prayer, declaring as he did 
so, in the following memorable words, his faith in an over- 
ruling Providence : 

I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing 
proofs I see that God governs in the aflFairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot 
fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise 
without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that, 
"except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." I firmly 
believe this, and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall suc- 
ceed, in this political building, no better than the builders of Babel. 

If a man like Benjamin Franklin could feel and talk thus, 
we may be sure that there was a multitude of believers in 
God's Providence in that critical and constructive period in 
the life of the young Republic who in faith and prayer com- 
mitted to the Hand Divine the ship of state which they were 
launching on the perilous sea of history. 

While ethical ideals and spiritual forces have most to do 
with the making of a great nation, and with its fulfillment of 
a great mission, it is also true that national greatness is not 
independent of natural and physical conditions. Spiritual 
treasures are in earthen vessels, and a people, in order to be 
great and do great things, must have a land to live in and cul- 
tivate which is favorable to their highest and best develop- 
ment. And so we find that Robert Ellis Thompson in writing 
of the Hand of God in American history calls attention to the 
rare combination of physical features and conditions that are 



12 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

found in the United States, and declares them to be a part and 
a proof of the Divine Providence that has designed and prepared 
America for a providential mission in the earth : 

The natural resources of our three millions of square miles are such as to 
constitute this the most valuable division of the earth's surface possessed by 
any people. It contains more land capable of human cultivation, more 
navigable waters in its lakes and rivers, more extensive mineral deposits, 
and larger pastures, than does any other national area. . . , Providence 
seems to have kept the most valuable thing in the New World from notice, 
until the fit people was ready to occupy this region which now exceeds all the 
rest of the continent in the numbers of its population, its accumulations of 
wealth, its diffusion of intelligence, and its high standard of living. 

IV. The Religious Faith and Moral Character of Our 

Presidents. 

If nations are instruments of Divine Providence, the faith 
and character of rulers is a matter of vital moment. Under 
a free democratic system of government, where the people 
choose from among themselves periodically their own rulers, the 
moral ideals of the people find expression in the type and char- 
acter of the men chosen as rulers; and these leaders and repre- 
sentatives of the people, therefore, are in turn, in a sense, an 
expression of the moral character of the people whose public 
servants they are. This at least is here true in democracies to 
an extent that cannot be true where thrones are inherited 
and rulers are born rather than selected by the people in view 
of their qualities and fitness for leadership. If "like people 
like priest" was said of Israel, "like people like president" 
may be said of a democracy like America. 

An examination and study of the representative rulers and 
chief magistrates of the American people will reveal the fact 
that the men selected to fill the office of President, taken as a 
whole, embody, in no small degree, in their private life and 
personal character, and also in their public and official acts, 
the ethical ideals of the Christian religion. No debauchery 
and basely immoral use of office such as has often made in- 
famous the annals of the royal families of the world in the 
past has ever blackened the history of our Presidential office. 
We can select only a few for special study — and our highest 
and greatest these will be, but in moral character and fidelity 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 13 

to duty no better than others. If a Divine Hand guidevS a 
nation, it must be upon the rulers who determine and shape 
its policies. 

George Washington, our first President, was a devout and 
consistent member of the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 
his first official utterance as President appears the following 
declaration of his faith in an overruling Providence: 

It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent 
supplication to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who pre- 
sides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aid can supply every 
human defect that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happi- 
ness of the people of the United States, a government instituted by them- 
selves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument em- 
ployed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to 
his charge. In tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and 
private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than 
my own, and those of our fellow-citizens at large not less than our own. No 
people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible Hand which 
conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every 
step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation 
seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. 

After eight years at the head of our national government 
Washington retired, and in doing so delivered a farewell ad- 
dress that has been pronounced one of the most masterful 
State papers ever written by any ruler. It contains words no 
less significant of the estimate which he placed upon religion 
than the above words uttered at the beginning of his presi- 
dency: 

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, reli- 
gion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man 
claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pil- 
lars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. 
The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish 
them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public 
felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for repu- 
tation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are 
the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with cau- 
tion indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without reli- 
gion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on 
minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to ex- 
pect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. 

These are golden words. Could a Christian nation ask from 
its first, most honored, and most representative ruler a better 



14 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

declaration than this of faith in Divine Providence and in reli- 
gion as the foundation of national morality and greatness? 

"In fortitude, justice, and equanimity," says Walter Savage 
Landor, "no man ever excelled George Washington. No 
exemplar has been recommended to our gratitude, love, and 
veneration, by the most impartial historian, or the most 
encomiastic biographer, in whom so many and so great virtues, 
public and private, were united." 

Thomas Jefferson is frequently referred to as a skeptic in 
i^eligious opinions. But one of his most recent biographers 
says in an introduction to a late reprint of what is known as 
"the Thomas Jefferson Bible" that this impression is alto- 
gether erroneous. This "Jefferson Bible" is the best possible 
proof that could be given of Jefferson's profound reverence for 
Christ. He titled it "The life and morals of Jesus of Nazareth 
extracted textually from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John." He prepared it in French, Greek, and Latin 
as well as in English. This biographer says of him: 

Thomas Jefferson was from early life a close student of the Bible. It was 
of the Bible that he wrote: "There never was a more pure or sublime system 
of morality than is to be found in the four evangelists." His further inter- 
est in it is clearly shown by the original copy of the so-called "Jefferson 
Bible," now preserved with so much care in the National Museum at Wash- 
ington, it having been purchased by the United States government as a 
memento of the author of the Declaration of Independence, and is now a 
priceless relic of that great man. It is a little leather-bound volume re- 
sembling in appearance an old account book, and on its pages may be read 
the life of Christ, prepared bj' arranging chronologically all of the verses from 
the four Gospels that pertain to the career of our Lord, omitting, however, 
"every verse or paragraph that to his mind was ambiguous or controversial, 
and every statement of fact that would not have been admitted as evidence 
in a court of justice. "... Jefferson was an indefatigably zealous student 
of the Bible, and was infinitely more conversant with it than the bulk of 
professed Christians. The framing of the Declaration of Independence re- 
veals a strongly religious mind. His religious belief has been questioned, 
and yet he was a member of the Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Va., 
contributing regularly to its support and serving as a member of its vestry. 
He wrote of himself: "I am a Christian in the only sense Christ wished any 
one to be — sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others." 

Jefferson expressed the wish toward the close of his life that 
he might be remembered by posterity simply as "the author 
of the Declaration of Independence, of the statute in Virginia 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 15 

for religious freedom, and the Father of the University of Vir- 
ginia." 

While Abraham Lincoln was not a member of any Church, 
those who knew him best in later life declare confidently that 
he was a true Christian. He took occasion often to declare 
his faith in the overruling providence of Almighty God and 
in the efficacy of prayer. He said once to an intimate friend : 
"When any Church shall inscribe over its altars as its sole 
qualification for membership the Saviour's condensed state- 
ment of the substance of both law and gospel, ' Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, 
and thy neighbor as thyself,' that Church will I join with all 
my heart and all my soul." In the Lincoln Museum at Wash- 
ington is an old Bible whose well-thumbed pages show that it 
was much used by the owner. The owner's name is plainly 
written on the inside of the cover: "A. Lincoln, his own book." 
He was all through his life a devout student of this Book, 
and from it he made more quotations in his conversation and 
in his speeches than from any and all other sources. He came 
into the presidential office under the most trying conditions 
that ever confronted any President, and the profound sense 
of responsibility which he was under and which almost over- 
whelmed him at times drove him to realize the need of God's 
help and guidance and made him a man of faith and prayer. 
When on his way to Washington City to be inaugurated, he 
uttered the following impressive words: 

I go to assume a task more difficult than that which has devolved upon 
any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have suc- 
ceeded but for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times re- 
lied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine blessing which sus- 
tained him, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support. 
And I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive the divine 
assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain. 

A confident and zealous clergyman once remarked to Mr. 
Lincoln during the war: "I am sure we are going to win, be- 
cause we have God on our side." "My friend," Mr. Lincoln 
replied, "what I want to be sure of is, that we are on God's 
side. That is the all-important thing for us to know." They 
who fought for "States' Rights" and "State Sovereignty" 



16 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

may have contended for a legitimate principle of government 
and a worthy cause; but whosoever, in any land at any time, 
fights for the perpetuation of human slavery, is fighting 
against the sun and the stars of heaven and against the sure 
Providence of God. No section of the United States is more 
devoutly thankful than the South is to-day that God in his 
Providence brought slavery to an end and preserved the 
union intact. The whole nation, however, and not the South 
alone, was responsible for the institution of slavery. In the 
earlier days of the Republic it existed in New England and else- 
where in the North, and when the slave owners there, after 
due experiment, found slavery unprofitable because of rigorous 
climatic conditions and growing antipathy to the institution, 
they sold their slaves to cotton planters of the South, and the 
sentiment against slavery thereafter rapidly developed through- 
out all the nonslaveholding States. Even Peter Faneuil, 
the founder of the "Cradle of Liberty," after whom the his- 
toric " Panel il Hall" of Boston, famous for its anti-slavery 
meetings and pronouncements, was named, was at one time 
a slave-trader. In the meantime it can be said — though it is 
no justification of the institution of slavery to say it — that 
among all the millions of negroes in the world those who live in 
America to-day, taken as a whole, enjoy more of the comforts 
and blessings and privileges of life than those found in any 
other land. If the North as well as the South is responsible 
for this blemish upon our history, it is also true that the 
people of the South to-day no less than those of the North 
count it providential that slavery was long ago brought to 
an end and rejoice in the Providence that removed this moral 
incubus and obstacle to progress from the body politic of our 
nation. 

No greater misfortune ever happened to the South, in 
connection with the Civil War, than the death of Abraham 
Lincoln at the time and under the conditions in which he 
died. Many things that followed the war in the South 
would have been less odious and grievous to the Southern 
people if he had lived. It is doubtless true that the successful 
termination of the war for the abolition of slavery and his 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 17 

tragic death at the end of it had the inevitable effect of 
making him, in the eyes both of the American nation and of 
the whole world, an even greater hero than he would have 
been adjudged to be, had he lived and served the country in 
a period of peace. While this is true, it is also true that it 
was a long time before the people of the South, especially 
the older generation that took part in the Civil War, could 
do justice to Lincoln and appreciate him for his real and true 
worth. But there are few Southerners left to-day who can 
read without sympathetic emotion and profound appreciation 
the tribute which was paid to him at his death by Walt 
Whitman in the finest poem he ever wrote : 

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done; 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won; 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: 
But O heart! heart! heart! 

O the bleeding drops of red, 
Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen, cold, and dead! 

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells! 
Rise up! for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills. 
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores a-crowding. 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning: 
Here Captain! dear father, 

This arm beneath your head! 

It is some dream that on the deck 

You've fallen cold and dead! 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse, nor will: 
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won! 
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! 

But I with mournful tread, 
Walk the deck my Captain lies. 
Fallen, cold, and dead.* 

Let us hope that the Providence that turned the selling of 
Joseph into slavery and the four centuries of Hebrew bondage 
in Egypt into ultimate good for the whole world as well as for 
the slaves themselves, even though it was meant by men for 

*Copyrighted by Small, Maynard & Co. Printed by permission. 



18 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

evil, will in some way overrule the apprenticeship in slavery 
which some of the negro race have served in this country to the 
ultimate intellectual, moral, and social good of their entire 
race, not only here, but in darkest Africa and elsewhere through- 
out the world. 

A Southern Confederate soldier-poet, writing of the battle 
of Gettysburg, speaks for others as well as himself when he 
sees the Hand of God in the final issues of that bloody battle 
and of the civil war, and uses these true and beautiful words : 

They fell who lifted up a hand, 

And bade the sun in heaven to stand; 

They smote and fell, who set the bars 

Against the progress of the stars, 
And stayed the march of Mother-land. 

They stood who saw the future come 
On through the fight's delirium; 

They smote and stood, who held the hope 

Of nations on that slippery slope, 
Amid the cheers of Christendom. 

God lives! He forged the iron will 

Which grasped and held that trembling hill; 

God lives and reigns; he built and lent 

Those heights for Freedom's battlement, 
Where floats her flag in triumph still. 

Fold up the banners, smelt the guns! 
Love rules, her mightier purpose runs. 

The mighty Mother turns in tears 

The record of her battle years. 
Lamenting all her fallen sons.* 

Among the State papers on file in the archives of our na- 
tion's history, there is perhaps none that could be more fitting- 
ly selected to set forth the high ethical ideal of the American 
people in matters of international ethics, than the message 
which President Grover Cleveland sent to Congress just after 
the forcible, and what he believed to be unwarranted, military 
occupation by United States soldiers of the Hawaiian Islands 
in 1893, which occupation Mr. Cleveland believed to be a 

*These lines were written by William H. Thompson, who fought as a 
private in a Georgia regiment, and himself took part in the battle concerning 
which he writes. 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 19 

breach of both national and international ethics. It was not 
a question, as he conceived it, to be settled by the poHtical 
aspirations and desires and the commercial interests of the 
United States (both of which rendered desirable the annexa- 
tion of the Islands), but it was rather, as he insisted, an occa- 
sion when a Christian nation should subordinate selfish inter- 
ests to that standard of Christian ethics which ought to be the 
first and highest law for the regulation of a nation's dealings 
with another nation — and all the more so if this other nation 
be, as was the case in this instance, at the mercy of the larger 
and more powerful nation. 

A few quotations from this document will suffice to justify 
our high estimate of it as an expression of the ethical ideals of 
the nation. 

I suppose that right and justice should determine the path to be followed 
in treating this subject. If national honesty is to be disregarded and a 
desire for territorial extension, or dissatisfaction with a form of government 
not our own, ought to regulate our conduct, I have entirely misapprehended 
the mission and character of our Government and the behavior which the 
conscience of our people demands of their public servants. . . . The 
queen knew that she could not withstand the power of the United States, but 
she believed that she might safely trust to its justice. . . . It has been the 
boast of our Government that it seeks to do justice in all things without re- 
gard to the strength or weakness of those with whom it deals. I mistake 
the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such 
thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation, and 
another for a weak one, and that even by indirection a strong power may 
with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory. ... A substantial 
wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as 
well as for the rights of the injured people requires that we should endeavor 
to repair. . . . 

The law of nations is founded upon reason and justice, and the rules of con- 
duct governing individual relations between citizens or subjects of a civilized 
state are equally applicable as between enlightened nations. The consider- 
ation that international law is without a court for its enforcement and that 
obedience to its commands practically depends upon good faith instead of 
upon the mandate of a superior tribunal only gives additional sanction to 
the law itself, and brands any deliberate infraction of it not merely as a 
wrong but as a disgrace. A man of true honor protects the unwritten word 
which binds his conscience more scrupulously, if possible, than he does the 
bond a breach of which subjects him to legal liabilities; and the United States, 
in aiming to maintain itself as one of the most enlightened nations, would do 
its citizens gross injustice if it applied to its international relations any other 
than a high standard of honor and morality. On that ground the United 
States cannot properly be put in the position of countenancing a wrong after 
its commission any more than in that of consenting to it in advance. 



20 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

It is needless to discuss here the circumstances and condi- 
tions that brought about later the annexation of these Islands 
to the United States, or to explain that if any wrong was done 
to the dethroned queen by such annexation, it seems to have 
been providentially overruled for the greater good of the 
Hawaiian people. These facts, however, cannot detract 
from our recognition and appreciation of the clear and dis- 
criminating statement of our ethical ideals as a nation that is 
contained in this message of Mr, Cleveland. 

Theodore Roosevelt found many occasions in his public 
career to refer to the Christian religion as the inspiration and 
foundation of the highest civic and national morality. Many 
of his public utterances could be delivered with the utmost 
propriety from any Christian pulpit. Take as a specimen the 
following, which is but one among many similar utterances 
which came from him, to show the high estimate which he 
placed upon religion in the life of a nation: 

I cannot understand any American citizen who has the faintest feeling of 
patriotism and devotion to his country failing to appreciate the absolutely 
essential need of religion (using it in its broadest and deepest sense) to the 
welfare of this country. If it were not that in our villages and towns as they 
have grown up the Churches have grown in them, symbolizing the fact that 
there were among the foremost workers men whose work was not for the 
things of the body but for the things of the soul, this would not be a nation 
to-day; because this country would not be an abode fit for civilized men if 
it were not true that we put our material civilization, our material prosperity, 
as the base only upon which to build the superstructure of the higher spirit- 
ual life. 

A man of clean, pure life and unblemished record, of un- 
usually sturdy, robust, and manly Christian character, of lofty 
Christian ideals for himself as a ruler and for the people over 
whom he ruled, he was indeed an honor to the nation. 

One other honored name will be mentioned later among the 
presidents who have helped to make a later epoch in history 
providential. 

V. Our Ethical Idealism and Altruism. 

Only that nation can consistently claim that an overruling 
Providence directed its origin, and that the Hand of God has 
been constantly manifest in its history, which continually 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 21 

brings forth deeds worthy of such a high claim. What deeds, 
now, can America appeal to in proof of the truth of her claim 
that she had a providential origin, and has had a providential 
history, and has a truly providential mission in the world? 
Surely such deeds only as bear the marks of a high standard 
of Christian ethics, and will bear the further and harder test 
of sincere and unquestioned altruism, can be named as worthy 
fruits of a tree that claims, like the vine from Egypt trans- 
planted in Canaan, to have been planted by a Hand Divine. 
The noblest deeds both of men and of nations are often done 
in quietness and obscurity, unnoticed in the ordinary round of 
life's incessant duties, the actors themselves being uncon- 
scious of anything save the conscientious discharge of duty. 
And this is none the less true because it is customary to cite 
(as we shall do) only such deeds as are conspicuous and well- 
known instances and examples of high ethics and genuine 
altruism. 

The spirit of America, of the real and true and ideal Amer- 
ica, is best described by four words: faith, freedom, ethics, 
altruism — (1) faith that shows itself in recognizing and rev- 
erencing God's Providence; (2) freedom, both civil and reli- 
gious, that never turns liberty to do good into license to do 
evil ; (3) the ethical ideals of Christ the standard of conduct 
and character, not only for individuals, but for the nation 
as well, and (4) altruism that Is made manifest in disinterested 
service for others. Altruism — using knowledge to help the 
ignorant, power to help the weak, wealth to help the poor, 
health to help the sick, and virtue to help the sinful — is a 
law of life, obligatory not more upon the individual than it 
is upon the nation; and in these righteous scales Jehovah 
weighs nations as well as individuals. By these ethical stand- 
ards let us judge our nation in the past, and determine our 
duty for the future. That much in our past history falls far 
short of this ethical ideal must be confessed. And yet this has 
been, and is, and must in the future be, our ideal — even 
though it be, as ideals always are, something that moves above 
and ahead, up to which the nation looks and toward which it 
ever moves as its goal. 



22 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Three notable episodes in our history may be referred to as 
peculiarly expressive of the real and true spirit of America, 
and as instances of our fully measuring up to the high 
ethical and altruistic ideal of the nation. 

The motives that led the American people into the Spanish- 
American War were in the highest degree ethical and altruis- 
tic. Judged by the incidents and events of that war — the un- 
broken series of victories on one side, and of defeats on the 
other — no war in biblical history, no war in all history, ever 
furnished more conspicuous evidence that Providence wrought 
for one nation and against the other, than was everywhere and 
all the time evident in this war. Evidence was never wanting 
that the Lord who loveth truth and righteousness, and the 
freedom which they alone can give, made his Providence to 
favor the nation that fought unselfishly for the rights of a 
downtrodden and unjustly oppressed people. But perhaps the 
finest exhibition of ethics and altruism that was furnished by 
that war, came when it was over, and the victorious nation 
had the conquered nation at its mercy. Did any nation ever 
do a finer, a more generous and magnanimous thing than to 
treat a conquered and prostrate nation as the United States 
treated Spain and her captive soldiers at the end of that war? 
It was then that America gave Spain and the world such an 
exhibition of genuine and generous altruism as no nation had 
ever furnished before, while, at the same time, it gave to Cuba 
her independence and the pledge of whatever financial and 
other help might be necessary for her national upbuilding. 
And this was done under conditions and circumstances that 
would have probably led any other conquering nation in the 
world to make this war the occasion for annexing Cuba to 
the United States, a thing which self-interest rendered most 
desirable but which the ethical and altruistic ideals of the 
American people prevented us from doing. 

Another deed worthy of a nation with a high moral ideal was 
furnished in the Chinese Boxer war, when the verdict of the 
foreign nations whose financial and other rights it was claimed 
had been invaded by the rebellious Boxers and not properly 
protected by the Chinese government, assessed enormous 
and, what many outsiders regarded as outrageously unjust, 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 23 

indemnities against China — and this was done in spite of 
America's insistent and unyielding protest. Then again came 
an opportunity, not indeed for magnanimity and generosity, 
but rather for simple ethics and justice on the part of America. 
Out of the millions awarded our government by the foreign 
Powers that exercised jurisdiction in the case, our govern- 
ment paid reasonable compensation for damages done to 
Americans and their property, and then returned to China in 
a lump sum well-nigh all the millions that had been awarded 
to us — and in so acting America stood absolutely alone 
among the nations involved. Such unselfishness had its rich 
moral reward in the gratitude that was felt by the Chinese 
people for a deed so out of keeping with prevailing diplomatic 
national custom and so in keeping with America's high stan- 
dard of international ethics. It is not a matter for surprise 
that, following that memorable episode in our relations with 
the Chinese government, the hearts of the people of China 
should have become peculiarly open to Christian missionaries 
and teachers from Amei ica as well as to the representatives of 
our civil government. The money returned to them was used 
in a manner most agreeable both to China and to America, to 
educate a select number of Chinese young men and young 
women in American colleges and universities, all of whom in 
returning to their homeland have borne back with them not 
only the good will of America, but the Christian ethical ideals 
of our people. 

But during the century and a half that has elapsed since 
our nation began its career, there has been no epoch and no 
event in our history, and indeed in the history of the world, so 
momentous, and so demanding the exercise of high ethics 
and generous altruism on the part of men and nations, as the 
quadrennium embraced in the late world war (1914-1918) 
into which the voice of Divine Providence and a suffering 
world called our nation by many infallible signs and tokens. 
From the Declaration of Independence to the present time 
there has never been such an arousing of the moral conscious- 
ness of the American people, such a clear vision of simple, 
stem, inescapable duty, such singleness of aim and unity of 
action, such genuine altruism and self-forgetfulness, such a 



24 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

spirit of self-sacrifice, such enthusiasm for humanity, as char- 
acterized the people of the United States when in 1917, fol- 
lowing what they believed to be the leadings of Divine Provi- 
dence, they entered the world war and flung themselves with 
self-effacing abandon into the fight for human freedom — for 
the freedom of all nations and all men in all nations. 

It may be that our nation should have heard and responded 
to the call of God and humanity sooner than it did. It may be 
that many of our people ignobly commercialized their patriot- 
ism and fought more to gain gold for themselves than to se- 
cure life and liberty for others. It may be that the demoraliza- 
tion and surging waves of selfishness and commercialism and 
lawlessness which have followed the war and engulfed our own 
and other nations, have made it hard to maintain that a really 
high and unselfish altruism ever did actuate us in entering the 
war. It may be that our people have had occasion to hang 
their heads in shame over what our nation has failed to do 
since the war ended. All this may be true. But no man can be 
true to the American people and to the facts of history, and 
say that our people were not as a whole actuated by the 
loftiest and most altruistic of motives when in 1917, with their 
hearts beating as the heart of one, they went into that awful 
struggle across the sea, believing that it was no less a part of 
their providential mission as a nation to make this fight for 
humanity their own than was the fight for their independence 
in 1776, or for the preservation of the Union and the abolition 
of slavery in 1862. Dr. Henry Churchill King has shown that 
not only all true Americans but many representatives of other 
nations also were quick to recognize and declare the truth and 
justice of these statements concerning America's altruism in 
this war: 

There is no mistaking the rare and lofty idealism with which America 
entered this war. America made her decision to enter the war on high 
ethical and essentially Christian grounds. Not for territorial or commercial 
gains; objuring all idea of later indemnities; practically unmoved, it must be 
stated, by thoughts even of self-defense; after every righteous effort to pre- 
serve peaceful relations with Germany had been exhausted; when the great- 
ness of the issues had become plain; in the face of fixed American traditions; 
in marvelously unified fashion; and across three thousand miles of sea — 
America threw her whole self, with every resource, into this struggle, for the 
sake of righteousness, of humanity, of civilization. It was a singularly im- 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 25 

pressive moral movement. No wonder that the distinguished litterateur, 
Hughes de Roux, voiced his conviction by declaring that "history had never 
before seen a great nation moved to war by so completely unselfish and ideal- 
istic motives;" nor that Mr. Balfour should describe the entry of the United 
States into the war as "the most magnificent and generous act in all history." 
"And they came," said Henry Bergson, the noted French philosopher, 
"with no designing aim, stirred neither by selfish interest nor by fear, but by 
a principle, by an ideal, by the thought of the mission they were called upon 
to fulfill in the world." 

But, lest America should be exalted above measure and be 
filled with pride and self-esteem because of her own altruism, 
Providence, quickly after the war, suffered days of disillusion- 
ment and retrogression to come to the nation — days which, 
whether it should be so or not, have sadly discounted and 
discredited, in the eyes of all nations, the high claims made 
for ethical idealism and altruism on the part alike of our 
soldiers abroad and our people at home preceding and accom- 
panying our participation in the war. But even days of dis- 
illusionment have a providential mission and teach a needed 
lesson that will not be learned in any other way, and that is, 
that lofty ethical idealism will not remain in the high air of 
itself, and that altruism will not remain disinterested and 
unselfish of itself. The same moral free will and personal 
power that called them into existence are necessary to keep 
them in existence. When the engine that took the aeroplane 
on high ceases to furnish power, engine and airplane fall to 
earth. When the heart ceases to send forth its currents of 
blood throughout the body, the heart and body die. Eternal 
vigilance is the price not only of liberty but of all progress; 
and moral progress is something which, however providential 
it be, is yet conditioned on human cooperation : it will not 
take care of itself. The keeping up of the never-ending fight 
necessary to hold what has been gained in moral progress, 
and to keep the progress perpetually progressing, is the great 
problem of Christian civilization in periods of peace. To 
win this ceaseless fight for moral progress, and keep it won, 
demands nothing less then a full moral equivalent of war. 
However justifiable a nation's entrance into a given war may 
be, and no matter how ethical and altruistic its motives, it 
must not be forgotten that moral progress is the achievement 



26 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

of peace and not of war. Peace, then, and not war is the 
best testing period of ethics and altruism in a nation, and 
furnishes the best opportunity for their cultivation and ex- 
ercise. The nation has been great in ethics and altruism in 
time of war; it should be greater still in times of peace. 

It is not wise, as a rule, to attempt to interpret any man's 
life and work as they are related to providential history until 
he is dead and his work is done. But we cannot close this 
study of the Hand of God in our history without referring to one 
President who is yet living. The man who voiced the senti- 
ments of the American people and led the nation in the late 
world-war crisis in our history, out of the shadows and perils of 
which we have not even yet passed, is destined, we believe, 
to take and to hold a permanent place in the front rank of 
those providential leaders that have made our nation morally 
great in the past and upon whose leadership the nation must 
depend in no small degree for great moral achievements in the 
future. Woodrow Wilson seemed, in the providence of God, 
to have "come to the kingdom for a time like this," and com- 
ing years will not diminish but deepen the world's appreciation 
of the great service he rendered our own and other nations at 
this moral crisis in the history of nations. Many of his public 
utterances during the eventful years of 1914-1919, when he 
was the moral leader and spokesman not only of the Ameri- 
can people, but of multiplied millions in other lands, are 
worthy to be placed, along with those of Washington, Jefferson, 
Lincoln, and Cleveland, among the official documents and 
state papers which we must rely upon to prove the truth of the 
claim that we are here making that God has blessed us above 
all other nations in giving us God-fearing and divinely guided 
men as leaders and rulers, and that, under the leadership 
vouchsafed to us by Providence, our nation has been called to 
fill in the past, and is called yet more fully to fill in the future, 
an altogether unique, important, and responsible mission 
among the nations of the earth. 

Among the many utterances of President Wilson expressing 
our ethical idealism as a nation we quote the following, each 
paragraph being taken from a different address, but all of 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 27 

them characterized by a common idea that brings them into 
unity in setting forth the ethical ideal of the American nation : 

If America stands for one thing more than for another, it is for the sov- 
ereignty of self-governing people, and her example, her assistance, and her 
encouragement, have thrilled two continents in this Western world with all 
those fine impulses which have built up human liberty on both sides of the 
water. She stands, therefore, as an example of independence, as an example 
of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested international action 
in the maintenance of justice. 

Why is it that every nation turns to us with the instinctive feeling that if 
anything touches humanity it touches us? Because it knows that ever since 
we were born as a nation, we have undertaken to be the champions of hu- 
manity and the rights of men. Without that ideal there would be nothing 
that would distinguish America from her predecessors in the history of na- 
tions. 

But the final test of the validity, the strength, the irresistible force of the 
American ideal has now come. The rest of the world must be made to realize 
from this time on just what America stands for; and, when that happy time 
comes when peace shall reign again, and America shall take part in the un- 
disturbed and unclouded counsels of the world, it will be realized that the 
promises of the fathers, and the ideals of the men who thought nothing of 
their lives in comparison with their ideals, will have been vindicated, and 
the world will say: "America promised to hold this light of liberty and right 
up for the guidance of our feet, and behold she has redeemed her promise. 
Her men, her leaders, her rank and file, are pure of heart; they have purged 
their hearts of selfish ambition, and they have said to all mankind: Men and 
brethren, let us live together in righteousness and in the peace which spring- 
eth only from the soil of righteousness itself." 

And my dream is this: that as the years go on and the world knows more 
and more of America, it will also drink at these fountains of youth and 
renewal, that it will also turn to America for those moral inspirations that 
lie at the base of human freedom, that no nation will ever fear America un- 
less it finds itself engaged in some enterprise inconsistent with the rights 
of humanity, and that America will come into the full light of that day when 
all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that 
her flag is the flag not only of America but the flag of humanity. 

The final results accomplished by the recent "Disarmanent 
Conference" held at the invitation of our Government in the 
city of Washington are not yet ready for appraisement, but 
are even now sufficiently apparent to justify us in feeling that 
the leadership of our nation in bringing about and promoting 
the work of this conference are in keeping with our traditional 
record, ethical and altruistic, which commits us to using our 
influence and best offices for promoting peace among all 
nations. But America, if she be true to the ethical ideals of the 



28 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

past, will not be content to stop with this effort for world 
peace. 

"The Master is come, and calleth for thee," are words that 
may be as fittingly addressed to a nation to-day as they were 
to the young woman of Bethany in the lifetime of our Lord; 
and the things to which He calls cannot be misunderstood by 
any one that hears his voice. It is to altruistic service, not to 
isolation and self-centeredness, that God calls the America of 
his Providence. This great nation, the helm of whose history 
his Hand has guided in the past, cannot be true to its divine 
call in this new day of world needs and world opportunities, 
if it closes its ears to the cry of the nations and its eyes to the 
vision of their needs. If famine, or pestilence, or flood, or 
earthquake, or any other disaster has befallen the people of 
any land at any time, the American government and people 
have never failed to do the ethical, altruistic, and generous 
thing as needed. The gift of money and of men and women for 
helpful and sacrificial service, whenever and wherever needed, 
has always answered without delay the call of humanity — 
and this to such an extent that America has become the syn- 
onym among all nations for generosity and helpfulness. This 
is as it should be ; and this is the best proof of the presence of 
God's Hand in our history. Nor should the commercialism 
and profiteering of money-loving and money-making men in 
our country be allowed to blind any man's eyes to the recogni- 
tion of the splendid altruism that belongs, and has always 
belonged, to our people. Nowhere else in all the world have 
so many men and women of great wealth turned their accumu- 
lated millions into the service of humanity at home and 
abroad, as here in America. Whenever anything is to be done 
in the world, two things are necessary, money and men. 
Money is needed and much of it, and needed for everything; 
and this means that it is the duty and providential mission of 
some men and some nations to make it, to make it that it 
may be used for the service of humanity. The commercialism 
whose accumulated coin is turned into currency for the serv- 
ice of mankind is in its ultimate aim ethical and altruistic. 
If America controls the wealth of the world, and is herself 
ruled by gold, it is the providential mission of her ethical 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 29 

idealism and altruism to turn this rule of gold into the golden 
rule. 

A great nation has never perhaps in the history of the 
world had so great an opportunity, by virtue of its unprece- 
dented possession both of wealth and of moral influence, to 
practice with generous altruism the golden rule and the law 
of love toward unfortunate and suffering sister nations as 
has the American nation to-day. Not only is it true that 
"man's extremity is God's opportunity," but it is also true 
that the world's extremity is a Christian nation's great op- 
portunity to serve mankind and bless the world by giving 
practical proof that the golden rule and the law of love can 
be practiced by nations as truly as by individuals. It was 
in the darkest days of Hebrew history that prophetic opti- 
mism and universalism burst into glorious song, inspired by 
the vision of the coming Messiah; and in and through the 
Hebrew nation the Messiah came in spite of the wreck and 
ruin of empires that seemed for the time to make vain all 
hope and promise of his coming. Happy would we be if 
America might become the servant of Jehovah in this our 
day through whom the Messiah's golden rule and law of love 
should be made real in the world. It was with America's 
opportunity for this Messianic service in mind that the fol- 
lowing lines were written: 

Whene'er with faith we dare to hold 
That golden rule, not rule of gold, 
Shall be for men and nations, too, 
The rule of life the whole world through; 

When rich and poor alike shall see 
From golden rule no man is free; 
When greed of gold and jealous hate, 
O'ercome by love, and shame, abate; 

When we dare seek with all our heart 
To serve all men, and do our part 
Through love that shares in generous deed. 
And joys to meet another's need; 

Then earth will see the day at hand 

When all true souls in every land 

In league of love for right shall stand; 



30 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

When all one golden rule shall own, 
And love on earth shall claim the throne, 
And Love in heaven as God be known. 

For faith can never know defeat 
That has in power of love its seat.* 

VI. What Makes a Nation Great? 

What, then, shall we say, in view of these facts, is the voca- 
tion of the American nation ? What is the task which Provi- 
dence has assigned to us as a people, discharging which we 
will fill our place among those favored nations who are "the 
called according to God's purpose" — called to serve, not 
themselves only, but others also, and perchance all mankind? 
We answer our own question in language partly furnished by 
one of our own great Presidents: It is our mission to main- 
tain in the world that form of government which is best 
adapted to promoting the highest good of all its citizens, in- 
tellectually, morally, and socially; to lift needless and un- 
natural burdens from all shoulders; to clear the paths of all 
worthy and laudable pursuits and throw them open to all who 
are prepared to enter them, and to afford all an unfettered 
start, and as far as government can make it so, a fair and equal 
chance to achieve success in the race of life. And then, having 
done this for its own people — indeed, while doing this for its 
own people — to use its moral influence and material power to 
secure similar conditions and advantages for all other peoples 
without regard to race or residence. 

The final proof of the Hand of God in a nation's history 
then is not found, if this answer be true, in its unequaled 
wealth, or its commercial supremacy, or political prestige or 
military power, but in the moral metal of its manhood and the 
moral worth of its womanhood — in the goodness and greatness 
of its people, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
make you free" — knowledge, truth, freedom, personality — 
these are the things provided by Providence to make individ- 
uals and nations great. And when this greatness has been 
attained, "he that is greatest among you shall be the servan 

*Nashville Christian Advocate, November 28, 1919. 



A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 31 

of all " — this is the test and proof of greatness in the eyes of God 
for nations as well as for individuals. Knowledge and culture, 
ethics and character, service and altruism, personality and 
power — these are the credentials furnished by God to men and 
nations who, submitting to his providential guidance, seek 
for honor and glory and immortality. The American sage 
who furnished the words with which we began our study of 
God's Hand in our history at its beginning, has no less happily 
described for us the providential aim and end of that history in 
a little poem titled "The Nation's Strength," which needs 
often to be quoted that it may aUke warn us of our danger 
and inspire us to seek for national greatness and glory where 
alone it is to be found : 

What builds a nation's pillars high 

And its foundations strong? 
What makes it mighty to defy 

The foes that round it throng? 

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand 

Go down in battle's shock; 
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand, 

Not on abiding rock. 

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust 

Of empires passed away; 
The blood has turned their stones to rust, 

Their glory to decay. 

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown 

Has seemed to nations sweet; 
But God has struck its luster down 

In ashes at his feet. 

Not gold, but only men can make 

A people great and strong, 
Men who for truth and honor's sake 

Stand fast and suffer long. 

Brave men who work while others sleep. 

Who dare while others fly — 
They build a nation's pillars deep 

And lift them to the sky.* 



♦Copyrighted by Houghton, Mifflin & Company. Printed by permission. 



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